


One Not Far Distant Day

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:17:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: "So that's how it happens," Stephen said, when he reached the edge of the pool. One minute we're travelling peacefully through the countryside..."
Relationships: Frank Merrick/Jenny Saint, Stephen Day/Lucien Vaudrey
Comments: 12
Kudos: 80
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	One Not Far Distant Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mautadite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/gifts).



_Underhill had found them. He’d followed them, a nasty, stealthy chase across the miles, through France and Italy and Greece, had lurked in the shadows of all the places that Stephen had loved with a passion, had watched them, had come for him. Come for Lucien. Newhouse was there too, close behind, scarf a sodden red and dripping, even as Merrick pushed Stephen into his path, away from Crane, so he couldn’t cause him any more…_

Stephen woke with a quiet gasp, heart pounding and eyes wide to search the dark.

No. 

Instead of the haunted darkness, he found the soft grey dawn light that had sunk its way into the tent he shared with Crane, and the inky form of Crane’s magpie tattoo spread across smooth, tanned skin. It was still, wings and feathers at peace, doing nothing more than rise and fall gently with his lover’s sleeping breath. Underhill and Newhouse were long dead, and they were far away from all that, on another continent even. Nothing was coming to get them.

He took a deep breath, turned carefully onto his back so as not to wake Crane, and reached out to lift the canvas of the tent a little and peer outside. Yesterday had been muggy, and then raining and muggy by the time they set up camp. It was barely any cooler now, and the clouds were still lowering over everything, but the world was still and calm, if depressingly sunless. Stephen had found that he liked the sun when it was clear and bright in the sky, away from London’s fogs and smogs.

He blinked, staring out into the pale, foreign land, conscious that Crane’s feet were pressed against the side of his leg, that not too far away Saint and Merrick were sleeping in their own tent, that their horses were tethered safely nearby. Peaceful. Safe. His nightmares had been getting fewer and further between the more miles they left behind them, and the more wonderful things that Crane showed him, but they’d sneak up on him sometimes, like this one, so that he woke feeling he’d left things undone, that he should be working, that he should be _making things better_ somewhere else. 

It was still strange being away from London, even after all their amazing months. He’d never been out of England before, although he’d come close once, chasing a rogue practitioner almost to the Welsh Marches. In fact he’d not often been very far from London, and at home he knew almost every street, every alley, every park and path. _Not_ knowing that, not having that safety net around him, was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.

It was wonderful.

They had spent a bewildering fortnight in the twisted alleys of Constantinople, wandering bazaars where Crane bought lush fabrics for Esther and Dan, reasoning that the twins would eventually need smart clothes and really shouldn’t be shown up by their parents even before they could walk. Stephen, who knew that Esther cared almost as little for her clothes as he did, forbore from arguing, and simply enjoyed watching the pleasure on Crane’s face as he weighed each bright silk and velvet against another. Eventually they had headed west instead of further east, because Saint had been so enchanted by the sea that she hadn’t wanted to leave it, and Crane had shrugged, caught Merrick’s eyes, and said _Why not?_ They had taken a boat across the sparkling Sea of Marmara, and then Crane had bought them horses in Panderma, with an ease that still startled both Stephen and Saint, and led them over hills drenched in warmth and fragrant pine trees, and dotted with unexpectedly beautiful flowers, following the coast all around.

Stephen had thought he’d never get used to horseback, but by the time they reached Smyrna it was as if he’d never travelled any other way. He enjoyed camping too, working with the path that they were on to choose temporary homes by rushing streams, gathering wood for the fires that he lit with a flick of his fingers, and which they often cooked entire meals on. Well, Merrick did, watched closely by his wife who seemed to take instruction from him much more easily than she ever had from Stephen. Stephen watched the two of them together, still warily at first, but with increasing joy when it was clearer than ever that Merrick was as amazed by Saint as she was by him. Crane, of course, had been right all along.

Now they were striking inland again, because it was time, and because Saint turned out to be just as eager to walk the mountainous currents as she had been the shifting sea breezes. For a while the days had turned more overcast, the springtime warmth shifting towards summer heat with a kind of threatening promise. Stephen’s nightmare, he thought, had come with the gloom and oppression of the day, too much like those days around Romney Marsh. He thought about waking Crane to finish dispelling it for once and for all, but he didn’t move, lay drifting in a laziness he’d rarely been able to indulge until he met Crane, who took its value entirely for granted.

Last night they’d fucked quietly and softly, looking into each other’s eyes. They’d been doing it like that more and more – partly because of the tent of course, on this stretch of the journey, but also partly because much as Lucien clearly loved their more… _spirited_ occasions, Stephen could see now how much he sometimes needed it this way too. He was managing to repress the guilt that he’d never realised it before, that he’d never given Lucien the attention he needed to realise it, because that was _over_ now and he could give Lucien whatever it was that he wanted. Stephen liked the idea of that.

Beside him, Crane’s breathing hitched, and there was an eruption of movement and a long sigh, and then an arm settled firmly across Stephen’s stomach.

Never mind the dull day. Stephen smiled. “Good morning.”

“My sweet boy.” Crane took another deep breath, waking up slowly and luxuriously, stretching comfortably in the tent that had been made especially to fit his unusual length, and grasping Stephen more firmly about the waist. “I can hear you thinking from here. What time is it?”

“I don’t have a watch.”

“Use mine.”

“It’s morning.”

Crane’s eyes opened at last, and he tilted his head back slightly to stare at Stephen for a moment, his hand sliding down under the thin cotton blanket that half covered them both.

Stephen’s breath caught.

“So it is,” Crane said. “Fancy that.”

o0o

When Stephen woke next, the light through the canvas was brighter, it was warm enough that at some point he’d pushed their cover entirely away, and Crane was gone. That was alright though, because he could hear voices; Crane and Merrick talking about distances and directions, Saint’s occasional casual-sounding query. She didn’t fool Stephen, who found it just as hard not to be entirely in charge of his own life, but she still sounded a thousand times more relaxed than she’d ever sounded back home. He stretched languorously, feeling at peace with his world, turned over and reached for his clothes.

“Morning, Mr D.” Saint gave him a quick smile as he emerged from the tent and wandered over to the fire.

“Morning Jenny, Mr Merrick.” Stephen glanced at Crane, and neither of them needed to say anything. “Am I to understand we’re taking a day off?”

Merrick glowered. “According to ‘is nibs.”

“If you’re too frightened to try it…” Crane waved a tin cup in Merrick’s general direction.

“Which I’m not,” Merrick retorted evenly. “You want to go covering yourself with the world’s sh…”

“It’s hardly that.”

“You can smell it from here!”

Stephen sniffed the air enquiringly. There was, indeed, a faint whiff of rotten eggs from somewhere. Sulphur. Either the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction when they arrived, or he’d been more tired than he thought.

Crane reached out to the coffee pot keeping warm by the fire, and nodded Stephen towards a cup on the rock beside it. “If it’s good enough for the Romans…” he began, pouring a stream of dark coffee.

“What, them blokes what’s been dead for hundreds of years?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Crane advised Stephen. “It’s famously healthy.”

“Healthy, bollocks! Nothing to do with other people’s bollocks being covered in…”

“Merrick!” Stephen snapped before he could help himself, and promptly choked on his coffee. Of course Jenny knew what he and Crane did, of course she did, and she wasn’t his student any more, but…”

“Don’t mind me, Mr D,” Jenny said with a smirk. “Married woman now, ain’t I?”

“The point is,” Crane jumped in quickly, “That _this particular_ mud has health-giving properties, and therefore it is worth the detour.”

Stephen scrambled to catch up. There’d been days in his life when he woke in the blink of an eye and fell into a life and death chase even before he’d realised he was conscious for the day. This was not one of those times. “Mud?”

“We’re about half an hour from the pools, it would be criminal to let the opportunity pass us by because _some_ people are worried about a little dirt.”

“Fangotherapy,” Saint said. “That’s what that bloke called it. You heard of it, Mr D?”

“I can’t say I have.” Stephen sipped his coffee and looked at her enquiringly. “Who was this?”

“We’re invited to dinner,” Crane said, beaming broadly. “And a lovely young woman who took a fancy to Saint is going to take us to the mud baths this afternoon.” He grinned even more broadly as Saint sniffed ostentatiously and looked away from him over her shoulder. 

Stephen didn’t know whether to be pleased or appalled that Saint was learning to ignore Crane’s worst excesses. “To dinner where?” he asked, glancing briefly around them. The hills seemed as green and mostly bare as the hills of the day before, broken only by the occasional darker green of a pine forest, or a splash of pale earth where nothing much was growing at all. They certainly hadn’t passed a village for miles.

“The Villa Quentina – a rather delightful Italian family who have lived here for the last dozen years or so,” Crane replied.

“One way of saying it,” Merrick muttered. “You’ve lost your edge, you have. Delightful!”

“And you’ve lost your sense of humour. They were perfectly charming.”

“Kind of charming what’s on their way home at nine in the morning!”

Coming from a man who was quite often on his way home from something unpleasant at nine in the morning, and speaking as the one it takes to recognise one, Stephen felt he might have a point, but Crane simply lifted one eyebrow and smirked.

“They had a bear, Mr D. As a pet!” Saint interrupted. 

A bear? Stephen was starting to wonder how he could have slept through all this. He’d seen one once, when he was a child, hadn’t liked the way the other children had taunted it, throwing things to make it growl and dashing back beyond the length of its chain.

“And they want us to spend the night in their _villa_.” Saint said with emphasis. “Will I have to wear a _gown_?”

Stephen looked up at Crane for help. “Well I suppose…” Most of their luggage had been sent ahead by steamer to Crane’s house in Shanghai, but he was well aware that Merrick had packed at least one of Saint’s gowns, a gift from Crane when they had all visited Rothwell for the first time together. Saint was getting used to them, but she much preferred her boy’s trousers when she could, which she had swapped for the baggier local salwar when they reached the heat of Istanbul, and she found that women there wore airy trousers every day.

“The Quentinas are travellers like us, Miss Saint, and will no doubt accept whatever you choose to grace them with,” Crane reassured her, and then carried on, ignoring Merrick’s rolled eyes. “But you look very elegant in the blue gown.”

“Right, and you’re wishing you had one in silver.” Merrick stood abruptly, and Stephen choked on his coffee again at the thought of Crane, all six foot three of him, in a pale and elegant dress. “Come on Jen, we’d better get packed up if we’re dining _iht_ tonight.”

Saint grinned wickedly at Stephen, but swallowed the last of her coffee and then followed Merrick towards where the horses were grazing.

“Are you serious about this…what did you call it? Did Saint say _fangs_ …?”

“Fangotherapy. I hear it was all the rage in Venice.”

“We’re not in Venice,” Stephen couldn’t help but point out. “Did we pass a Turkish bath yesterday, when I wasn’t paying attention?”

Crane grinned and reached out to coax a little more coffee from the pot. “While you were _resting_ this morning, my sweet, we had some visitors, as Miss Saint said. The Quentinas - they’re from somewhere around Padua and apparently mud is their business.”

“Mud is their business.” Well he had, after all, watched people rush yelling out of perfectly good warm houses to bath in the snow, when they paused in Switzerland over Christmas.

“It’s good for the joints,” Crane explained, finally having mercy on him. “Does wonders for your back after a month on a horse.”

“I’m sure.” He must have sounded as unconvinced as he felt, because Crane just smiled affectionately. “Trust me,” he said. “When have I let you down?”

“Well, there was that restaurant in Orleans that turned out to be run by that chap you’d fleeced over some tea shipment…”

“I did _not_ fleece Marchand, he’s a lying son of a syphilitic weasel at the best of times…”

“And the lido that didn’t have any water in it…”

“There was a drought! Even I can’t command the clouds to rain. Or exist. Oh, don’t believe me, but don’t come crying to me when you can barely mount up tomorrow!”

Stephen paused to let that image sink in a moment, caught Crane’s eye, and gave in to his own wide smile. Crane shone when he was excited about some new thing, Stephen’s own sun, following him close all the way along the Silk Road.

He just wasn’t entirely sure about following him into mud.

o0o

The Villa Quentina turned out to be a long two-storied building at the bottom of the next valley, painted a dark salmon pink, and they paused at the top of the hill to take its measure. The hills rose steeply around it, forested with thick, dark pine trees, so that even in mid-afternoon it was already in the shade. Even on his admittedly limited experience, Stephen wouldn’t have thought it was hot enough for the family to still be enjoying their afternoon _rip…_ , _riso…_ \- damn, he’d forgotten the word for it _again_ \- but the shutters were closed on every window, and there was a thick, somnambulant feel about the place. 

“You sure this is it?” Merrick asked at last. 

“No,” Crane said. “I expect it’s one of the other villas we passed. Perhaps you could pop back and ask.”

“It must stay very cool in the summer,” Stephen interrupted. “But I can’t imagine winter here.”

“They probably winter abroad,” Crane said. “I would.” He touched his horse’s flanks, and led them forward, down a meandering path, and onto a surprisingly short drive for the size of the building, with trees still crowding close along its edges. 

“I suppose they did get home safely?” Stephen asked at last, when they had ridden down onto the clattering gravel path and dismounted, and still apparently not woken the house. The door loomed over them, thick and wooden and pink, but there was a heavy iron bell-pull beside it, and so he reached out and gave it a tug. In the stillness of the afternoon, they all heard it ring inside, a deep, sonorous sound. 

“Maybe we should come back later,” Saint suggested, and Merrick caught her eye and flashed her a reassuring smile. That had been his job once, Stephen thought, not sure whether he felt pleased, or somehow much older. 

“Perhaps they’re…” he began, and broke off as the door suddenly opened before them, into what seemed to be no more than a gaping dark hole. It was the shadows of a hallway, Stephen realised after a moment, and realised too that there was someone standing there; a pale and slight young woman with black hair, and dressed in black too, the only colour about her a bright red ribbon around her neck, holding a cameo locket.

“Merhaba.”

“Merhaba,” Crane said, for all the world as if he spoke the language. “We’ve come to see Signor Quentina.”

The woman looked them up and down without expression, and then nodded and held the door open. “Please.”

They trooped past her, Stephen peering back to check their horses and catching sight only of their swishing tails as they were led away by servants unknown. He reined in the temptation to rush out and see what was happening to them – Crane seemed to have forgotten about them as soon as the door opened.

They were led through the house and into an elegant drawing room, where the maid paused to open the shutters slightly, and fiddle with a bowl of roses, bruising their petals to send their scent across the room. “Please,” she said again, indicating the chairs arranged around the room, and then gliding back to the door. “Moment.”

Stephen looked around. The walls were papered a dusky red, the dark floorboards scattered with Turkish rugs, and the furniture was heavy and old. There was a marble fireplace, the grate filled now with an arrangement of bright flowers and grasses. One wall was lined with bookshelves, and the books had a well-read look to them. It had a feel of comfort, of being lived in, and he wasn’t surprised to be greeted by a voice as hearty as the maid had been restrained.

“Buon Giorno! My friends – you are very welcome here! Mr Vaudrey, Mr Merrick! And you must be the other friend,” he said to Stephen with a broad smile, taking his hand in both of his and shaking it solidly up and down. “My dear!” He turned to Saint, took her hands and kissed them one at a time. “You are welcome to my humble home!”

“Quentina, this is Mr Stephen Day – Stephen, Signor Quentina. We met this morning,” he added unnecessarily, more, Stephen thought, as a placeholder in the conversation, because Quentina was clearly bursting to continue.

“Signor Quentina,” Stephen said, nodding politely. “I’m sorry I missed you earlier.”

“No matter!” Quentina all but bellowed. “No matter at all! You are here now – and we will have cake! Cake and refreshments! It is rarely too early for refreshments on a day such as today, hmmn? You will meet the others soon, but my daughter Angelina will join us momentarily – she has been resting after our journey, you know! Sit! You must sit down!”

Quentina rattled on, about the warmth of the day, and his hopes that they had been enjoying Turkey, and Stephen caught Crane’s eye, amused enough for now - although it was likely to be a long visit unless the man ran himself down. Crane smiled back, leaned back in his seat and cut loudly and clearly through the monologue. 

“I’ve been telling Mr Day about your health pools.”

“Ah, the pools!” Quentina began, but was interrupted again by the appearance of a rather beautiful young woman in the doorway. The men stood, followed rather uncertainly by Saint.

“Father, you do run on,” she said, with a bare hint of accent, before crossing the room to greet each of them with a hand poised to be kissed. Saint looked across at Merrick in alarm, but the woman scotched that by taking her by the shoulders and kissing her on each cheek. “My dear, how nice to see you again – I’ve been longing for it. We must have a cosy tête-à-tête, the two of us.” Stephen felt his eyes widen as she reached out to stroke a finger down the side of Saint’s neck, watching her consideringly.

“Er… yeah, al… I mean, that would be… lovely,” Saint managed, before pulling away slightly to stand closer to Merrick.

Crane caught Stephen’s eye again with another amused twinkle – see what I mean? – but before he could speak, Quentina had rushed in once more.

“My dear, it is too early,” he said. “It is far too early for _that_ \- time enough to become better acquainted after dinner, I’m sure. You were asking about the pools, Mr Vaudrey, and I am eager to show you around, but first we must have cake! Sit! Sit!”

By the time the cake had arrived, accompanied by glasses of sweet white wine, Stephen had heard all he wanted about the virtues of fangotherapy, and was thinking of running out and jumping into one of the pools purely to shut the man up. If Crane hadn’t been listening so intently, with all the signs of a new convert, he might even have tried a little fluence for the sake of peace, but instead he sat still and reached out to the ether, feeling his way through the flow of the house, trying to relax into it. The flow felt sun-saturated, with the same lazy warmth that had permeated through all across the southern countries, weighted slightly with the age of the house – or rather the contents. Even the servants presence felt calm and measured in their wing, with none of the tension of big houses he’d been in at home. He stretched further away, through the window and outside, past the rub-click of crickets chirruping. There was water, silt-thick, but running past the house, and he followed it back towards its source, felt it dense and heated and deep, bubbling up from the earth, up and up…

“You will wish to rest before dinner!”

Stephen shook himself, and looked up at Quentina, who had jumped energetically to his feet to ring a bell beside the fireplace. 

“Esmeray will show you to your rooms! I fear the weather is closing in on us, and the pools will be better tomorrow, but I promise that after tomorrow you will feel no more pain!”

“Weather?” Crane looked questioningly towards the half-closed shutters.

“You cannot feel it?” Angelina asked. “There will be a storm this evening – there is thunder in the clouds, and it wants to rain.” She clapped her hands together and smiled, but her eyes alighted on Saint again, who squirmed slightly in her seat.

Now that Angelina had said as much, Stephen realised that Saint had had something of a weather look to her for the last day or so, the slight restlessness she often had in the autumn, when the wind was beginning to blow, or when the barometer dropped. He caught her eye and she tipped her chin, _yes_.

Esmeray led them back towards the front door, and then up a wide stairway to a long corridor stretching off in either direction. 

“Signor Quentina there,” she said, raising an arm and gesturing somewhere to the left, and then leading them along the corridor to the right. “Signorina Angelina.” She waved at another closed door, and then motioned Merrick and Saint to the room next door. “You here, please.”

Crane and Stephen were allocated bedrooms further along, separated by a water closet and another room with a closed door, and Stephen waited until the girl had vanished back to her duties before following Crane into his room. Their bags had been brought upstairs, and Crane was rummaging in his for his shaving kit.

“You do have interesting taste in… er…”

“Fellow travellers?” Crane took out the small box, and began to unpack it. “Adventurers?”

“They’ve lived here eight years.”

“In a land far from their first home. I’m sure they have fascinating stories.”

“I’m sure Quentina is going to tell us all of them. Will they all be about mud?”

Crane raised an eyebrow at him. “You really don’t like the idea of the health pool?”

“Covering myself in layers of foul smelling dirt so that I can wash it off again? I seem to have spent the last twenty years doing that – I had rather looked forward to staying clean on this journey. Relatively speaking.” They’d been washing in rivers and streams for the past week, _clean_ was definitely fairly relative.

“Relatively speaking,” Crane repeated speculatively. “You know, you are looking somewhat _dusty_. And it occurs to me that it’s been some time since we were surrounded by walls, and graced with a washstand and water.” He stepped across to it, lifted the water jug, and poured a long stream of water into the basin from on high. “Take your clothes off and then get your hands in this water.”

Stephen’s breath caught, because there it was, that tone in Crane’s voice, and in just the few weeks since their last solid-walled room and lack of near-neighbours, he had _missed it_.

o0o

By the time they went down for dinner the storm that Quentina had promised was rumbling over them, thunder echoing loudly around the valley, interspersed with bright flashes of lightning through the shutters, and a heavy feel, waiting for the rain. The corridors were lit brightly with gas lamps, however, and Stephen wondered how it was done, so far from any other civilisation, and revised his opinion about the wealth of the Quentina family. The villa was unassuming in many ways, and the mud baths were hardly teeming with guests, but there was money there somewhere.

They stopped off to collect Merrick and Saint, who had indeed donned her pale blue gown and gathered her hair into another glittering arrangement a la Esther, and followed the sound of muted voices and the clinking of glass back to the drawing room.

Quentina and Angelina had been joined by another man and woman both as tall and dark as their hosts, skin fashionably pale despite their obvious Mediterranean heritage. And _that_ must take some doing as well, Stephen thought. They had clearly just made some kind of family toast, each holding crystal glasses of wine so dark red that it was almost black. An open bottle stood on a silver tray on the sideboard, surrounded by more glasses, and Quentina set his own drink down and raised the bottle as soon as he spotted them.

“Drink!” he boomed. “The storm has come, our guests have come, and we must drink and be merry!”

“Father,” Angelina said reproachfully, as he began to pour the wine. “You have forgotten the introductions again.” She caught Saint’s eye and smiled, and Stephen was amused to see Saint smiling awkwardly back. He knew that she’d come across women’s women before – there were sapphists in London, and he’d heard Saint laughingly explaining the term to Joss, especially carefully so as not to spare his blushes. She had bloomed under Merrick’s careful love, but it took a while, he knew, to understand being appreciated for yourself. 

“This is my sister, Roseta,” Angelina said, taking Roseta’s hand and leading her first to Saint. As Angelina had done, Roseta kissed her on each cheek, hands lightly on Saint’s shoulders, splayed nearly to her neck, as she did so. The men each kissed Roseta’s hand, Stephen still feeling awkward and all kinds of fool as he did so. What was wrong, he thought again, with simply saying hello? It was only the upper classes who felt this need to kiss and paw all over strangers, and he could have done without it.

“And Cristien, our brother.”

Cristien was a strikingly good looking man, in the way that Stephen had found many Italian men to be. Not a patch on Lucien, of course, with his cool blond elegance and knowing charm, but handsome all the same. Quentina must once have had the same dark eyes and sweeping dark hair, the same smooth planes of cheekbones and full red lips, and Stephen wondered if Cristien ever looked at him, and thought about what he would become.

To Stephen’s surprise, Cristien took him by the shoulders in the same way that the girls had greeted Saint, kissing him once on each cheek and, Stephen thought, lingering perhaps a little longer than necessary. He watched the man as he did the same to Crane, and then attempted to draw close to Merrick.

“Pleasure,” Merrick said gruffly, holding out his hand. Cristien smiled, and shook his hand in both of his, and Merrick pulled away as soon as he could.

Stephen ended up making conversation with both Cristien and Roseta, while Lucien listened patiently to their host’s garrulous ramblings on, from what Stephen could hear, anything and everything. Merrick and Saint stayed close by, Saint clearly trying her best to avoid being alone with Angelina, who somehow managed to do the rounds of them all.

“I swear, Mr D,” Saint hissed in his ear when Merrick had retired briefly to find a water closet, and Angelina began gliding away from her father and Crane in their direction. “She so much as puts another finger on me, and…”

“Jenny! Such a beautiful name! Come, sit with me and tell me where it came from!”

Saint shot him a desperate look, then tilted her chin and followed Angelina to the chaise longue, sitting carefully at its centre, presumably so that Merrick could come and rescue her as Stephen had so clearly failed to do. “One o’ the prozzies wot took me when I was born gave it me, or so they said…”

They drank wine, and processed to the dining room at nearly ten for their dinner, as fine a spread as any they had had since leaving London. Most of the meat could have been served back in London too, but the soup was a concoction of lentils, spiced and buttered, and then a stew of aubergines and peppers, and cucumber in a sharp, yoghurt sauce that made Saint wrinkle her nose and put her spoon down hurriedly. For pudding there were pastries, light and delicate, soaked in syrups and scattered with nuts, and always there was wine. 

Stephen watched Crane, seated further down the table and on the opposite side, as he grew expansively drunk, telling tale after tale, to the merriment of his audience, and generally recruiting Merrick to remember the details for him. He caught Saint’s eye, and twisted his lips at her in a wry smile, in anticipation of the weaving path that they would both be taking to bed later, and she rolled her eyes back at him with the same half-exasperated affection.

The Quentinas too were affectionate, with both their guests and each other, and Stephen wondered just how debauched things could sometimes become. They’d not heard anything about the family as they were travelling, and if things were too bad then there would surely have been rumours and hints about them. And yet, there was something…

They retired again to the drawing room, sometime after midnight, and Quentina opened the shutters properly now, so that they could watch the play of light in the sky, and listen to the thunder as it seemed to recede and then return and then recede again. The mood in the room echoed the mood outside; one moment loud and jovial, then fading to a quiet lassitude that saw Crane eventually slumping against Stephen on the couch, with Roseta on his other side, hand reaching out again and again to touch Crane’s arm, or tap him playfully on the knee. When she turned and laid her head on Crane’s shoulder, laughing into his neck, Stephen got to his feet pointedly, and looked down at Crane. 

“Time for bed,” he said, eschewing formality, since everyone else had done so, but catching Crane’s eye, “My lord.”

Crane smiled a lazy smile back at him, eyes openly sultry. “You know, I think you could be right.” He held out a hand for Stephen to haul him to his feet, amidst a protest of sound from the Quentinas.

“And you, Frank,” Saint said, nudging Merrick, who had sunk down comfortably at her side on a two-seater settee, openly holding her hand, much to Angelina’s clear annoyance.

“Bed,” Merrick agreed, leering happily at his wife.

“Now there’s something I didn’t need to see,” Crane interrupted. “Up, you degenerate, and let these good people - _hic_ get to bed.” He turned confidingly to Stephen. “Hiccoughs,” he said. “You’ll need to surprise me. Why don’t you put your…”

“ _Up_ we go!” Stephen interrupted hurriedly, pushing him the direction of the door and the stairs. “Thank you, sir,” he added to Quentina, who was watching them leave with a disappointed expression. “For a wonderfully… _relaxing_ evening…”

“Relax,” Quentina said, staring him long, and unwaveringly, in the eyes, “You are relaxed…”

“Very relaxed,” Stephen agreed. “But now we must retire.”

“Ready for the mud,” Crane began, half turning back to the room. “Tomorrow…”

“ _Tomorrow_ ” Stephen gave him another shove, adding a little etheric push just for the sake of it, but Crane was trotting obediently ahead of him now, and they managed, at last, to escape the room.

Merrick had slung one arm around Saint’s shoulders, and was leaning heavily against her as they mounted the stairs. She had obviously given up entirely, and was using magic to take his weight to the point that his feet were barely touching the ground.

“Night, Mr D,” she managed, as they reached her room, putting one hand out to the door knob, and balancing her husband easily in place as she did so. 

“Night Jenny. Sleep well. We’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.”

“Doubt it,” said Saint, manoeuvring into the room, giving him a quick grin and then shutting the door behind her.

Crane slapped Stephen happily on the back, nearly sending him flying. “Best thing for Merrick, your Saint. Lovely girl. Very lovely girl. Well, except for encouraging him to drink so much. He’ll never get up tomorrow, you know.”

“Yes, I can see that’s going to be a problem,” Stephen said, turning them in the direction of Crane’s room, and letting Crane set a slow, swaying pace.

“Luckily I can - _hic_ \- I can hold my drink. What else shall I hold…?” He reached downwards.

“ _Lucien_! Come on, we’re nearly there…” Stephen twisted the brass doorknob with a thought, lit the gas lamps with another, and finally manoeuvred Crane into the room and onto the huge bed, with its sugar-twist posts and heavy draperies. 

“Very tired,” Crane said, sounding surprised. “Come to bed, my sweet, and…”

And he was out.

It was just as well, Stephen thought, kneeling down to pull Crane’s evening shoes off, that they’d taken advantage of the nice, private bedroom that afternoon, because Lucien was going to be in no state to do so tomorrow morning. He went around to the other side of the bed, used magic to pull Crane’s boneless body properly onto the mattress and then around so that his head was resting on the pillows, and then began to undress him. Crane did _not_ like waking up in yesterday’s clothes, and he was going to feel sorry enough for himself as it was.

It was a long time since he’d seen Crane so drunk, he thought, undoing the man’s shirt and pulling his arms from the sleeves, before rolling him out of it entirely and moving down to his breeches. Crane and Merrick both, for that matter, and he hadn’t even thought they’d been drinking that much tonight. Enough, certainly, to be pleasantly sloshed, but not to pass out quite so quickly. The wine must have been strong. There was, at least, something he could do about that, a trick that Dan Gold had taught him many years ago, and that he’d rarely had cause to use. Come to that, he’d never tried it on anyone other than himself, and even then only in an emergency, because if you were going to drink that much then you deserved the hangover, but just this once… He reached out and laid a hand over Crane’s forehead, sent a cooling wash of magic outwards. Crane’s face relaxed even in sleep, and Stephen stroked his thumb over the faint lines at the corner of his eyes, then took his hand away.

What he wanted now, more than anything else, was to get undressed and crawl into bed beside Lucien, but his bladder was starting to complain about the volume of wine he’d drunk himself, and there was a perfectly good water closet just next door. He gave Crane a last pat, opened the window a little to let the cooler air into the room, and turned off all the gas lamps but one, which he turned down just enough that he’d be able to see when he came back.

He slipped into the corridor, listened for a moment to hear whether the party was continuing downstairs, and then went to the water closet, a glory of porcelain and dark wooden cabinets, and relieved himself. He’d heard nothing, whether because there was nothing now to hear, or because the Quentinas had quietened down when it was just themselves, he didn’t know. He supposed that they were something of a degenerate family, which seemed odd, so far from anywhere. Perhaps the mud baths meant that it was normally much livelier around here.

When he stepped back into the corridor, Cristien was there, standing tall and straight, and staring at him. 

“Hello, Steffan.” He whispered Stephen’s name, made it something else entirely. 

“Hello,” Stephen said, torn. He wanted to go to Crane, but if Cristien was here he’d have to go back to his own room… _blast it all._ “I’m sorry if I made you wait.” He gestured to the water closet. “All yours.”

“I wait for you,” Cristien smiled gently at him, his veil of hair falling in a casual slant over one side of his face, emphasising his dark eyes rather than hiding them, and brushing his shoulders in a loose wave. Despite himself Stephen was drawn to those eyes, was aware of Cristien’s body as a powerful force in front of him, swaying slightly, almost hypnotic.

“It’s late,” Cristien said, raising a hand and smoothing it down the side of Stephen’s face. He should move away, he knew he should, but Cristien’s eyes… “Perhaps I should take you to your room…”

Stephen shook his head slightly. Crane was waiting for him, and he didn’t want this man, he _didn’t_ \- how could he when Lucien was a bare walls-width away, sleeping trustfully in his bed, in _their_ bed? 

Cristien’s fingers slipped down to Stephen’s neck, brushed gently up and down. “You are very beautiful,” he said. “In our world, when beauty meets beauty, it should be enjoyed. It should be relished…”

Stephen felt himself tilting slightly nearer the man, couldn’t explain it. Cristien was a beautiful man, and it was Lucien who had once said that he should let himself _live_ … Those eyes…

“Listen to me,” Cristien said, “Let us go back to your room, and…”

Something in Stephen’s mind snapped free, and he could feel it suddenly, the spell in the depths of Cristien’s eyes, reaching down through the man to command the ether and… _fluence_ him! The man was trying to _fluence_ him!

“I think not,” he said firmly, pulling away so that Cristien’s fingers were left hovering in mid-air. Cristien looked surprised for a moment, and then his expression changed, hardened, seemed to draw in on itself. He reached out again, and Stephen took a step backwards, pulling the ether to his own hands, but waiting, as Cristien opened his mouth to speak, to see what the man had to say for himself.

It wasn’t words that came from Cristien’s mouth. Instead his lips began to change, becoming thinner and drawing back, and as Stephen watched in horror the man’s eye teeth seemed to grow, lengthening downwards to a sharp point that seemed to shine even more whitely in the gaslight. Stephen took another involuntary step backwards, because surely this couldn’t be true, vampires weren’t _real_ , not like this, not… And he was fast, too, his hand clamping down on Stephen’s bare wrist, and squeezing, catching his eye again like a spear thrust into Stephen’s soul. His lips curved into a smile, fangs hanging over them now, and he drew Stephen towards him. _“Listen_ …” he hissed.

“No, _you_ listen!” Stephen said, slapping his hand down hard where the man was holding him, not letting him pull back when he wanted to, at the shock of Stephen’s power coursing through this palms. “You will stop what you are doing and you will forget that you saw me here.” He needed time, time to find out whether Cristien was the only vampire in the household, or whether there were others. Saint could look after herself, and for that matter he couldn’t imagine Merrick being seduced by someone like Cristien in the first place - _Angelina and Roseta!_ Angelina had her eye on Saint, but Roseta… “You will forget that you wanted to find me, and you will go about your business.” He said to Cristien. “Say goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Cristien said vaguely, releasing Stephen and looking around the corridor, bewildered. He took a breath, and shook himself, as if remembering what he was doing, and then he turned, opened the door to Crane’s bedroom, and vanished inside.

 _Fuck_! The man was a vampire, of course his bloody business was to go and find someone else’s neck to bite if he couldn’t have Stephen! _You’re losing your edge, Steph_ he thought despairingly, _Too much sun and luxurious living…_ He leapt to follow him, pushing through the door and throwing power at the gas lights, to see Cristien already on the bed, on his knees, straddling Crane, and leaning down, braced on his arms towards him…

Crane came awake and turned his face upwards to Cristien. “I missed you…” he began, and then registered what he was seeing. “ _Tsaena_!” Crane erupted upwards from the bed at the same time as Stephen threw a line of power at the vampire, and Cristien flew backwards into the room to land on the floor like a rag doll.

“What the fucking _fuck_ fuckery is going on?” Crane shouted, coming to his feet at the end of the bed; naked and magnificent, Stephen couldn’t help but notice. But Cristien was also back on his feet, face twisted in a snarl, was advancing again, and there really wasn’t time…

Crane reached out and pulled the jug from the washstand, began to take a step forward to smash it across the creature’s head.

“Lucien, _back_!” Stephen ordered, and flung heat and energy across the room. It hit Cristien full on, and he seemed to freeze for a moment, and then flames spread outwards from his chest, up and down, engulfing him. There was a final brilliant flare of light, and Cristien was gone. A shower of ash held in the air, and then began to float gently down to form a small pile on the rug. 

“What the _fuck_?” Crane said again, “Stephen…”

“It’s alright,” Stephen said, more calmly than he felt. He’d swear his actual bones were trembling, and certainly his heart was having more trouble than usual catching up with things. If that - _thing_ had bitten Lucien… Was it like the stories? “Everything’s alright.”

“What in the name of Satan’s hoary bollocks _was that_ ?”

Stephen took a deep breath. “A vampire. Are you alright?” His legs were starting to remember how they worked, so he took the few steps to Crane’s side, and reached around his chest to hold him close for a moment, not entirely sure whether he was giving or taking comfort. Both, he supposed, as always.

“A vampire? Like Xan Ji-Yin?” 

The Chinese shaman, Stephen remembered, whose soul had been crying out for vengeance after being murdered. He pulled back so that he could look up at Crane, examining his neck carefully for bite marks, or even scratches. “No – that was more of a shaman ghost. This is… Did you ever read Polidori?”

“ _The Vampyre_ ”? Crane fixed him with a hard stare. “The _fictional book_ about…”

“That would be the one. Although apparently less fictional than we’d previously thought.”

“I see.” Crane moved to crouch down beside the ash, poked it cautiously with a finger. “And is it dead? Why fire?”

“I hope so. And I didn’t have any holy water. Fire is supposed to purify, so I hoped… Plus it really should be quite hard to come back from that.”

Crane let out a half-laugh, and stood. “Was it the only one?”

To the point, as always. “I suspect not. I don’t suppose you’ll stay here while I go for a walk?”

“I don’t suppose so.” Crane was already pulling on his drawers and shirt. “They can’t all be…” He paused, shook his head. “Vampires. You’ll be telling me that Frankenstein really is wandering the Arctic next.”

“Not as far as I know. But then I suppose Shelley had to get her ideas from somewhere.”

“Oh, god.”

“I’m fairly sure that one was made up,” Stephen said, as comfortingly as he could. It wasn’t really a lie, not if he was _fairly_ sure. 

“Right.” Crane reached into his pack and pulled out a rather solid-looking cudgel, then caught Stephen’s eye. “It might at least slow them down,” he said. “Come on, let’s find Merrick and Saint.”

The corridor was still empty when they stepped outside, somewhat to Stephen’s relief, who’d been imagining half a dozen other creatures rushing to their dead cousin’s side. Maybe Cristien was the only one, maybe…

There was a sudden scream from the Merricks’ room, and then the sound of something being thrown violently across a room.

“Jenny!” Stephen gasped, sprinting towards their room, only just behind Crane’s longer legs. Crane threw himself at the door and it burst open, to reveal Saint mid-air, in a long white nightgown split to the thigh, kicking Angelina full in the face. Behind her, Merrick and Roseta were circling each other, she with fangs out, Merrick with what appeared to be the sharply broken leg of a chair. He was frowning, but he was steady on his feet.

Angelina fell backwards, caught herself against the wall, and seemed to almost fly towards Saint again, who had landed, pirouetted gracefully, and now grabbed her by her hair and threw her in the other direction. Roseta screamed as Angelina crashed into her, and they both fell towards Merrick, who held out his makeshift weapon and shoved it forwards. Stephen reached out and gave it some direction and _oomph_ , so that it went straight through Roseta’s body and penetrated Angelina as well. There was a second’s breathless pause, and then their bodies seemed to explode into dust, shimmering for a moment in the air, before falling to the ground.

Merrick stood up from his crouch, caught his wife’s eye and nodded, then looked over to Crane and his cudgel. “You’ll wanna get that sharpened somewhere. So, vampires?”

“Apparently so.” Crane surveyed the room carefully. “Just the two?”

“Told you I never liked that quim-faced hedge whore!” Saint said, colour high. “And the two of ‘em together _ain’t right_ \- they were _sisters_!” She took a breath. “What’s a vampire?”

“Sucks yer blood and makes you one o’ them,” Merrick said briefly. “Mebbe explains why this lot didn’t seem to get much sun when they were out.”

“Fashionably pale,” Crane said, thoughtfully. “You know, it makes you wonder…”

“Wot I’m wondering,” Saint interrupted him, “is where that other puff-gut’s got to?”

“And what about the servants?” Stephen added. “If we’ve got them to deal with as well…”

“They go home for the night,” Merrick said. “Not one of ‘em lives in.”

“Now we know why.” Crane caught Stephen’s eye. “Is there some way you can…?” He waved a hand generally through the air, but Stephen was already shaking his head.

“I can’t feel them,” he said. “Not since we got here, come to think of it. Can you?” he asked Saint, and was unsurprised when she shook her head. “If they’re dead then unless they’re calling on it, they have no connection to the ether. No… what did you say they call it in China?”

 _Qi_ Crane and Merrick said at the same time. “I suppose that makes sense,” Crane added, and Merrick grunted. 

“What doesn’t make sense?” he said. “They’re bloody strong. Got a better left hook than you do, not that that’s saying much. All pale like that, you’d think they’d fall over easier.”

“Maybe ‘e’s in bed,” Saint suggested, focused. “There’s no one else for him to eat except us, right? Maybe ‘e wasn’t hungry.”

“Maybe.” Stephen knew he didn’t sound convincing. “But there were four of them and four of us.”

“Well who was Quentina going to eat?” Crane asked. “Cristien came for me…” He stopped when he saw Stephen shaking his head. “Cristien didn’t come for me? It certainly felt quite pointed…”

“He came for me first,” Stephen said reluctantly. “I, er… might have accidentally sent him in your direction.”

“Lovely.” Crane looked around. “So you two got the girls, which means…”

“Better polish off yer sacrificial goat act,” Merrick suggested. “If you want to catch a tiger.”

“Or lose a goat wandering the dark corridors.” Crane sent him a sardonic look. 

“I don’t like it,” Stephen said. “We can just search the house…”

Crane shook his head. “Merrick’s right. He could hear us coming. We need him to come to us. To me. And then you will rush to my rescue and we’ll all be able to get some sleep at last.”

Merrick blinked and looked at Crane. “Speaking of sleep, you up for this? You were on your way to scammered last I saw you. Slows you down.”

“Nearly being eaten seems to have given me something of a boost.”

“He doesn’t know that, does he?” Stephen said slowly. “So a drunk meandering lord would be just what he’s expecting…”

“And on that note, my love…” Crane headed for the stairs, weaving slightly from side to side along the corridor. Eventually he started to sing.

Stephen took a deep breath, and looked around the room. Saint had changed into a pair of her _salwar_ and a shirt, although her hair was still piled elegantly on her head. Her eyes shone bright with the storm outside, and he only had to glance at one of the windows for her to grin broadly, and nod. 

Merrick watched her go, then reached to retrieve an impressively long knife from a bag beside the bed. “Might take a look down the other end,” he said, “Make sure this lot don’t have no other family hidden away.”

Stephen followed him as far as the head of the stairs, tracking him until he disappeared into the room at the farthest end of the other wing, then he peered down into the dim light below. He could feel Crane’s presence wandering from room to room, questing. Nothing yet, then, and he shouldn’t be standing here out in the open either. It was just possible that Quentina would come upstairs looking for his children. 

He started back to Saint’s room, on the assumption that if she didn’t find anything then that was where she’d return. He’d just passed the door to Angelina’s room, focusing carefully on Crane’s movements downstairs, when it opened abruptly, there was a rattle of heavy iron chains, and he was cut off from the ether, and dragged inside.

“Benandanti,” a voice hissed in his ear, and he was shaken violently from side to side, held tight by the chains drawn close around his arms and chest. “You come here without your brothers, and you think you can murder _my family_!” He couldn’t see who it was yet, but then again he didn’t have to.

He landed hard on his knees on the wooden floor, was dragged across the room to the bed, where Quentina slammed him up against one of the posts, looping the chains around him again and again until he was held upright, facing into the room and across to the doorway, unable to move.

“Now tell me where your brothers sleep!”

Stephen twisted to try and see what the vampire was doing behind him. “I’m afraid you seem to be mistaking me for…”

There was a snarl in front of him, and he twisted back to find Quentina’s face close to his own, breath hot and sour, fangs sharply extended.

“I will have your blood, benandanti! And when you are on the very edge of death, you will drink of my blood, and my prey will be your prey! My revenge for your murderous abuse of my hospitality will last you an eternity!”

“I’m fairly sure you won’t, you know,” Stephen managed, mouth dry. “But perhaps you could tell me more about these bendati, and…”

Quentina snarled again, his face a rictus of fury, and spun around.

Behind him, Crane, who had raised his cudgel ready to bring it down hard, took a startled step backwards. Quentina leapt for him, hands curved into claws to grip Crane’s arms, knocking him down and pushing his face in towards Crane’s neck. 

He exploded in a shower of dust that hung in the air for a moment before falling. Crane came up coughing, and gasping for breath, but he nodded at Saint, still clutching the chair leg that Merrick had wielded so usefully earlier. “Thank you,” he said. “That was timely.”

“I heard the noise,” Saint said, casually, but her face was set in a smirk. “Thought I’d better see what the fuss was about.”

“It was mostly Stephen getting himself tied up again.”

That, Stephen thought, was unfair. “I haven’t been tied up in quite some time,” he pointed out, and then rattled his chains. “Perhaps one of you could…?”

Crane grinned, but stepped over and began untwining the heavy metal from both Stephen and the bedpost. “You know I think you’re right,” he murmured. “I’m going to have to see what I can do about that.”

Stephen knew he was blushing, but Saint had retreated to the doorway, and was calling down the corridor to Merrick.

“That it then?” Merrick asked, one hand on Saint’s shoulder as he came past into the room. “All done?”

“Thanks to your good wife,” Crane said. “I think we may finally be vampire free.”

“Good.” Merrick said. “Cos I’ve got one hell of a hangover.”

o0o

They spent what was left of the night in the kitchen, raiding the pantry for food, and waiting for the servants to return.

“You sure they’re not going to try an’ eat us, an’ all?” Saint asked, her eyes on the door. “Sun won’t be up when they get here.”

Stephen shook his head. “They’re alive. I felt them yesterday – you should have too, if you’d been paying attention.”

“Well, maybe I did,” Saint admitted, sniffing, but she looked comforted.

The cook was the first person to arrive, and there followed a fairly fraught hour trying to explain to Quentina’s small staff that the family had decided to up sticks and leave. Since the carriage and horses was still in the stables, and Stephen didn’t think it was worth terrifying the locals with tales of vampires in their midst, it was an uphill battle. In the end he and Saint went around together and spoke to everyone one at a time, sending them off home to explain that the villa and mud baths were being closed until new owners could be found.

“They’ll have it stripped in a week,” Merrick predicted.

“Your fluence is coming along, Jenny,” Stephen said approvingly. “Good job.”

“Thanks Mr D. Only – now can we go to bed? I ain’t been so tired since… since last time we was out working with Mrs Gold.”

“Do we want to sleep here?” Stephen asked doubtfully. “Perhaps…”

“Not only are we going to sleep here,” Crane announced, gripping him by the elbow and steering him up the stairs, “But I am going to have my mud bath tomorrow, and if any of you have any sense after tonight’s thrashing, you will join me. We will see you,” he threw back over his shoulder to the Merricks, “Tomorrow.”

Crane shut the bedroom door firmly behind them, and Stephen paused to throw a quick binding spell on it.

“It has been,” he said, turning back to the room, “A very long night. I don’t know about you but I could sleep for a week.”

“Let’s see how we get on with the next seven hours,” Crane suggested. “Come here, benandanti.”

“That’s what Quentina called me,” Stephen observed, stepping forwards into Crane’s embrace. “I still don’t know what it is.”

“Shaman. Witch. Magic protector. Someone rather special.”

“Ah. Well that’s alright then. My lord.”

Crane’s hands tightened on him, and then Stephen was being pushed down to his knees. 

He smiled, and then he linked his hands behind his back, and looked upwards.

o0o

Lucien Vaudrey, Lord Crane of Lychdale, and Viscount Fortunegate, stood in front of Stephen clothed only in a pair of loose white trousers. Behind him a wide grey pool stretched back towards the woods, and above them the sky stretched brilliant blue.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Stephen asked again, sublimely unconvinced that it was a good idea. He had brought Crane’s travelling clothes down with them, ready for their departure in a few hours, and he laid them carefully on one of the cleaner rocks.

“Are you sure you _don’t_ want to do this, is a better question,” Crane suggested. “I promise you, when we are back on those horses this afternoon, you will be wishing that you’d taken my advice.”

“Well, I suppose that will be the price I pay.” He seated himself on a bench that had clearly been put there for the less adventurous. “I’ll just wait here for Merrick and Saint. Good luck with being healthy.”

Crane favoured him with his most haughty expression, undid the trousers and let them pool around his feet, then walked boldly into the mud.

It swallowed him very gradually, the floor of the pool obviously sloping very gently down towards the centre. Eventually it became obvious that the pool would come no higher than his hips, and Crane sank slowly down until only his head was above mud, and then, with Stephen watching interestedly, he took a deep breath and disappeared. He reappeared moments later, and carefully, without wiping his face, lay back until he was floating on the pool of mud, a long grey log, or perhaps a tree trunk, Stephen thought fancifully.

The sun shone around them, and crickets chirruped a lazy song of summer to come. The scent of pine wafted over them, even through the sulphur of the pools, and Stephen closed his eyes, and slept.

He woke feeling sun-drenched, and thirsty, to find Crane still drifting lazily in the mud.

“Still alive out there?” he called.

“Mmmn.” Crane certainly sounded relaxed, but then Stephen had been perfectly happy on the bench. “It’s wonderful…”

Perhaps it really was, Stephen thought, almost tempted to join him after all, but on the other hand he was clean, and all he really needed right this minute for life to be perfect was a long drink of cool water.

As if called, there was a jingle of harness from the slope above the pools, and Merrick and Saint appeared with the horses and their packs, ready to go as soon as they could drag Crane away. Stephen stood up, stretched, and began the climb upwards.

“About ready?” Merrick’s face was expressionless as he watched Crane, but Saint’s smile was wide and wicked.

“As soon as you can convince him to stop relaxing and use the plunge pool instead. It’ll probably take him an hour to get that lot off.” Stephen reached into the pack on his horse for the water bottle, took a long, thirsty drink.

“What, that plunge pool what’s not got any water in it?”

“No..?” Stephen gazed from the hill with its advantage of height, to find that what he’d assumed to be a pool brimming with nice clean water was in fact a pool lined with nicely rounded stones, and completely empty of anything liquid at all. “Ah…”

“The fuck?” Merrick suddenly said, sharply, and Stephen turned to follow his gaze down the slope to Crane, heart lurching in his chest. He began pulling the ether towards him ready to attack, was aware of Saint doing the same beside him, looking desperately around to find the threat.

What he saw was Crane stand suddenly upright in the pool of mud, his back to them, so that a thick ripple of it circled outwards towards the shore. He was gesturing to the small girl with the red ribbon around her neck, _Esmeray_ Stephen remembered, who was clutching a bundle of cloth to her chest, and hurrying away from them all on the other side of the pool towards the trees. He hadn’t seen her with the others that morning, he remembered now, had assumed that she’d still been safe at home, if he’d thought anything about her at all.

“And you can bring my clothes back right now!” Crane shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The girl paused, and looked back at him. “Us have no job!” she shouted back. “You _kill_ our job!”

“Ah.” Crane’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “I see. You know about that. But they were _vampires_ , so I’m afraid we couldn’t…”

“You kill our _job_ ,” the girl said again, forcefully. “They pay us! Now they don’t pay us.” She held Crane’s clothes up in front of her. “You pay us instead!”

“No, I don’t think that’s…” Crane began to wade through the mud towards her, but it was slow going, and the girl simply skipped back a few steps, then stuck her tongue out at him, turned and ran off. 

“Shall I…?” Saint asked doubtfully, gesturing after the girl, and Stephen shook his head.

“To be fair, we did kill her job.”

“Wot - they _knew_ they was working for vampires?” Saint screwed up her nose. “Don’t seem like a good idea to me.”

“Maybe they didn’t know,” Stephen suggested. “I mean we might not have realised at all if…”

“If they hadn’t tried to eat us,” Merrick chipped in helpfully. “Probably gave the game away to most of their visitors, that.”

“Lure the travellers in, tell people they’d carried on their journeys to who knows where. It must have worked nicely for them.” He didn’t like to think of how many people might indeed have come to the mud baths and never left. “But if they ate their servants then the locals would have started to talk.” Stephen looked back down to where Crane was still standing in the middle of the pool, hands on hips, looking after the girl, and started back down the slope towards him. “As long as they sent them home every night, and they didn’t actually see anything…”

“Those mud baths give people energy, did they?” Saint asked. “See ‘em off without breakfast an’ all?”

And there was nothing he could say to that. Dark things didn’t always hide in the night and the cold grim shadows of cities like London, he supposed they were here in the sunshine too. He gave up the argument, and concentrated on his footing as he walked back down the gravel path. In any case it was all over now, and Crane was waiting for them.

“So that’s how it happens.” Stephen said when he reached the edge of the pool again. “One minute we’re travelling peacefully through the countryside, the next minute you decide you want a mud bath and we’re attacked by vampires and your clothes are stolen.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean, I know Merrick’s always telling stories, but I had assumed that at least sixty per cent of them were made up. Possibly eighty.”

Crane shot a quelling look at Merrick, which, naturally, did nothing more than fizz a little when it touched him, and slide gently to the ground.

“Shut up.”

“Sorry.” He wasn’t. How could he possibly be, in the glory of watching Crane’s long, muscled body twist and turn as he tried to wipe the thick coating of grey mud from his limbs. “Can I… er… help in some way?”

Crane paused in what he was doing, a thick line of mud piled onto the side of his hand from his hip, ready to be pushed off, and fixed him with a considering stare.

Stephen took a prudent step backwards.

Crane turned his gaze to Merrick, glancing quickly at Saint and down to where the depth of the mud was preserving his modesty. “Merrick, you useless excuse for a scrofulous manservant, perhaps you could pretend to do your job, and go and fetch me my damned clothes!”

“Certainly, my lord. Where did my lord leave them again?”

Crane’s eyes narrowed. “You will both suffer the torments due to you as soon as I am out of this muck and decently clothed. Now will you get me a clean suit of clothes from our packs or do I have to come over there…”

“Yes, my lord. Fetch a bucket or two while I’m up there. Come on, Jen.” Merrick retreated, heading back up the hill, and they could both see his shoulders shaking dangerously.

“As for you…” Crane turned back to Stephen, and crooked a finger.

“Not in a hundred years,” Stephen said with a grin. “But I tell you what…” He glanced back to make sure that Merrick and Saint weren’t looking, and then he gestured slightly with his fingers, let the power flow through the warm air towards Crane, let it begin to glide along his body in long, languorous strokes, scraping the mud away to fall with a slight _plop_ back into the pool. “…just relax.”

_December 2019_

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, Mautadite!


End file.
